From Polio to COVID: Environmental Virology at its Best

Since the era of waterborne jaundice and polio, diseases spread by viruses were present prior to our understanding of these unique biological entities. Environmental virology attempts to understand the disease risk through the monitoring of viruses in wastewater, fresh and marine waters. The advent of molecular tools and high throughput sequencing technologies coupled with metagenomics has offered the opportunity to identify human viral pathogens including global spread of diseases such COVID-19.  We now have the ability to monitor community health via the surveillance of our wastewater thus addressing global grand challenges including the implementation of world-wide vaccination programs.